Lanny’s October Dividend Income Summary

Who else is ready for the final push of the year on the dividend stock investing front? Even though time is going by fast, we still need to take time and analyze how performance has been on the dividend income front. Without analyzing the pure numbers, how can one improve? The leaves are falling fast, weather is dropping, the heat is on in the house and my dividend stock portfolio is warming up right along with it. If only I can be financial independent with my dividend income right about now, would be icing on the cake. Let’s check out my October 2017 dividend income total!

Dividend Income

I received a total of $422.03 in dividend income this October. Time, yet again, for the best OCTOBER month ever recorded, crossing $400 for the first time ever in this month. The 401(k), Health Savings Account (HSA) and all dividends are automatically invested/reinvested and helps take the emotion out of timing & making a decision. Also, to find out why I max out my 401(k) and HSA – please refer to the 3rd part of my tax series, as that describes the magnitude of benefits to increase the amount you can invest due to reduction in taxes. One new investment into Cisco (CSCO) has started to bear fruit in the portfolio. Outside of that receipt, the remaining growth is through dividend increases and reinvestment!

As stated, I bought Cisco (CSCO) not once, but two times this year, once in June and once in August. That investment is churning dividends my way baby! $23.03 almost picked up a whole share, which is awesome and shows the promise the dividends engine will have for me in the future. DowDuPont (DWDP) is a “different” ticker here, as this was a recently formed entity post the merger between the two entities of Dow Chemical and DuPont. My Dow dividend last year was $30.29 and this year is $30.99. This wasn’t a large increase, but that’s due to the large dividend received once the merger closed. A year does a lot for dividend investors and I can’t wait to talk about the comparison from current to prior year.

Similarly, I have split out the taxable and the retirement accounts, as the ” – R” indicates a retirement account dividend (or the furthest column to the right). I separated these two, as I like to know what portion of my dividend income is coming from retirement accounts that I cannot touch until 59.5 (barring any other usage rule I could use). Here, it shows that I received a solid total of $36.59 (up from $33.01 last year primarily due to dividend reinvestment & dividend increases) or 8.7% of my income from retirement accounts and the other 91.3% was from my individual taxable account portfolio. Additionally, this shows from retirement accounts that I’m all ready for my set it and forget it mentality to keep that income going. To see my portfolio – one can go to our portfolio summary page.

Dividend income year over year comparison

2016:

2017:

Year over year, my portfolio’s dividend income was 13.9% higher in 2017 vs 2016 for October. You’ll notice Kraft-Heinz (KHC) was received this month last year, but not this year – primarily due to their change of payment month now being on a quarter-end. Therefore, even with Cisco added in, this was semi-offset by Kraft being removed. Another piece of information that you can observe analytically is the growth each company had. Each stock that paid last October and this October grew, hands down. Philip Morris (PM) dividend was over 7% higher, which makes a large impact due to size. The largest percentage change was Canadian Imperial (CM), which was 16.5% higher this year versus last year, primarily due to consistent increases and positive exchange rate translation! At this rate, I should be able to earn over $470 next year, but the goal would be to leap that, with my eyes set on over $500!

dividend increases

We all know by now, the power of the dividend growth rate is real! Though not a continuous churn as we’ve seen in prior months, I experienced two very solid dividend increases in October. Additionally, Bert talked about these dividend increases in his Expected November 2017 Increase article, where he debriefed what occurred in October. I know you may be slightly jealous on Visa (V) Bert, at least you received AEP’s increase and I didn’t, even trade? Visa’s (V) increase of over 18% was slightly higher than expectation, as I had mine set lower due to recent trends seen in the dividend growth rate column. Aflac (AFL) was truly business as usual, again, this year. I wish for once they would surprise us with a dividend over 6%! In order to achieve this much forward income, one would have to invest $329 at 3.50%! Thank you very much (companies) for the dividend increases this month!

dividend income conclusion & Summary

The name of the game is to learn and act in the right manner to what you have learned. The plan is to maximize every dollar for investment opportunities and live a balanced life. My hope is that my month of dividend income above shows the community that one can use dividend income as a revenue engine to take back control of your life. Dividend investing, once you learn the right way, becomes easier to do and starts to make quite a bit of sense : )

Does anyone have any questions on what I’m looking at? What my favorite dividend stock metric is? What my stock screener tools I use when making a purchase? Also, what companies have you enjoyed receiving dividends from? Dividend income can be a very addictive area to build in your life, and I always feel like once I start, it’s hard to stop. Also, please leave any other questions, comments and feedback below! I am looking forward to reading and responding to them and truly appreciate everyone for stopping by! As always, best of luck and happy investing everyone.

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40 thoughts on “Lanny’s October Dividend Income Summary”

Hi Lanny, Congrats on a great month! Even with KHC moving to another month, you managed a double-digit increase which is impressive on its own! I also received my first dividends from CSCO in October 🙂 Keep it up! -BI

Congrats on crossing the $400 mark Lanny! You have a nice list of stocks for this month as well. We share MPW and GSK. MPW was my biggest payout this “off” month. I like the14% YOY growth rate too. Congrats! 🙂

It’s funny, no one really owns MPW, so when I saw yours, definitely gets me pumped. I would love to continue a double digit growth rate going forward, each and every month. We both need to stay on track!

Thank you very much and for the 60% savings rate – let’s just say my average has been in the mid to upper 60% year to date on average. Crushing that savings rate in order to keep the investment train moving!

Congratulations on the great month! I’m a little surprised to see Total in there. I always thought they paid their dividend in the last month of every quarter, like all the other oil majors, but I guess I’m wrong :).

Question: do you always automatically reinvest ALL dividends? What about companies that are overvalued or make up a ‘full’ position in your portfolio? Personally I prefer to just have all my dividends in cash, and then I find a good opportunity for it. The important thing is that it gets reinvested.

I do automatically reinvest all of the dividends, due to taking the research, timing, costs out of it. Definitely understand the pros/cons of it all and something I always consider. Appreciate you sharing your strategy.

Seems like a great month yet again, Lanny! Topping the 400 on dividend income, getting past the 60% savings rates is quite impressive. Only if Kraft Heinz were to stick to the same month… There has been some shifting around this year.

It has been a slow dividend month for us, no surprise there 😉 But in december we’re gonna boost our additional income big time, since our 2 rental units will be up and running by then.

Congrats on the new record for the month of October. Cracking $400 is nice tidy sum for sure for the first month of the quarter. Keep pushing for a strong 2017 finish. I swear it was like yesterday we all were posting about the new year with our many goals in mind. Don’t blink. Time moves too swiftly. All the more reason to stay invested and keep on investing every month or when you can because time waits for no one. CM is still looking interesting to me for my own portfolio one day. I hold TD, BNS and RY for now but still like BMO and CM. Keep up the good work.

Thank you very much. It does feel like yesterday and it feels like last week when we were cracking much smaller figures than we are now. CM has played out very well, thankfully the exchange rate is better thus far vs. prior year, helping the figures a bit. Love the Canadian banks, always.

Lanny, Great job as always. You and Bert are a couple of really good dividend stock investors. Would love to see you screen some stocks in future posts. The market is pricey (in my opinion) and would love to see how good stocks hold up against your screen. I’m not a big international dividend stock investor, but we do have DEO and GSK in common. Thanks for putting this together. Tom

Congrats on a record October, Lanny! Yet another milestone on your march to FI. Amazingly, I don’t share any stocks from your taxable portfolio. I guess that just goes to show how many excellent companies there are out there paying dividends. We do share the two companies you reported increasing their dividend though. Got to like that! Love that massive savings rate you achieved, too…. I’m nowhere close to that, and don’t think I can be…. so I’ll just have to cheer you on. Take care.

Appreciate the comment. It alllll starts with the savings rate, though tough, I’ve been able to keep it steady at the > 60% mark for quite some time. Damn fortunate, but it’s due to my decisions being made, that’s for sure.

You said it, so many companies and not a single one in common, crazy!!! Loving increases, always – one of the reasons of being a dividend investor. Let’s keep it going!

Going is getting tough, which means I need to keep going, haha. Adding dividend income is what it’s about, earning it is great, but getting that forward income stronger is the goal!!! Appreciate the comment, time to get going haha

$400 crossed for the first month is a huge milestone. Congrats Lanny. Also, what I really liked is that the dividends you earned in CSCO almost made you a whole share of the stock. That’s very important. When you can earn dividends to buy a whole share of the stock, then it’s just going to supercharge your compounding growth. Congrats again!

Hey Lanny, your numbers look good as always. I have to say as someone who is not American its sometimes hard to understand the different accounts and the tax implications but I do understand the overall numbers and thats what counts. That you are able to cover 43% of the expenses for your house is amazing.